Groovin' In The Years

After the Flamin' Groovies left Sire Records in 1980, they continued to play and record even without a recording contract. They were based in London for most of their time on Sire, but relocated to San Francisco and played around the Bay Area to a small but devoted cult following.

In late 1980, they recorded some sessions at Goldstar Studios in Hollywood (where Phil Spector recorded) that resulted in a single ("River Deep, Mountain High"/"So Much In Love") and dodgy EP called The Goldstar Tapes on France's Skydog Records. Skydog were bankrolling the sessions and ran out of funding, so only two songs were completed (the ones on the single). The others were rough mixes of Beatles, Byrds, and Spector covers that were intended for a full album that the Groovies wanted to make with Phil Spector.

After the aborted sessions at Gold Star, the Groovies band slowly fell apart. Mike Wilhelm, David Wright, and Chris Wilson all left, and Cyril Jordan and George Alexander tried to carry on with a series of personnel changes. After a through different drummers and guitarists (including a post-Plimsouls Peter Case for awhile), Cyril and George recruited drummer Paul Zahl and singer Jack Johnson (no, not that one!) from Jack Casady's band SVT.

This quartet released a 1984 single on Australia's AIM records ("Way Over My Head") that was so well-received that they toured Australia and AIM released a record called One Night Stand, with re-recorded versions of "Shake Some Action", "Slow Death", "Teenage Head", and other Groovies classics, along with a few covers (like the Hoodoo Gurus' "Bittersweet"). This performance of "Shake Some Action" comes from that Australian era.



When One Night Stand was recorded, the Flamin' Groovies back catalog was out of print in Australia, so there was a point re-recording their old songs with a new lineup. Unfortunately the new versions of the songs can't hold a candle to the original recordings, and they've been licensed all over the place, so there are tons of cheapo Flamin' Groovies compilations floating around with these songs. Most of the Groovies albums on emusic are One Night Stand repackaged with 1980s live tracks.

After they left Australia, the Zahl/Johnson lineup toured Europe and the States before calling it a day in 1989. AIM released some of their 80s demos on an (unauthorized) album called Step Up that were later released on the final official Flamin' Groovies album Rock Juice in 1993. By this time, the "band" was just Cyril and George, with Paul Zahl and Jack Johnson thanked as extra help.

There have also been tons of Flamin' Groovies live albums and reissues over the past two decades. Sire's Groovies Greatest Grooves cd is a good place to get the best of their latter years, and the new Australian compilation This Band Is Red Hot condenses their entire career down to a single disc. For reissues and live material, all the Norton releases (Slow Death, In Person, California Born and Bred) are worth picking up.

Many of the former Flamin' Groovies are still making music and playing out. Cyril Jordan has a band called the Magic Christian, Roy Loney continues to play with Phantom Movers (with Danny Mihm and James Farrell) and the Longshots (featuring Scott McCaughey and Jim Sangster of the Young Fresh Fellows), Mike Wilhelm is still active as a Charlatan and solo artist, and Chris Wilson plays around Europe and the UK with his band The Groovin' Flames. And Cyril and Roy are performing together in late April as part of New Orleans' Ponderosa Stomp.

I've now made it through the Groovies entire catalog with a few days to spare before finding a new artists of the month for March.